Alright, people, time for some fun. The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine moved onto the "Suited For Success" plot, and I can safely assume that means it's time for the story to get back to focus!
Well, sort of. It starts from Opal's perspective. And she's apparently actually Princess Platinum, and she's mad that Rarity is taking her sweet time feeding her. Then she goes into a bunch of backstory about how that Hearth's Warming Eve pageant isn't how it really went down, Celestia's parents sort of taking them over, and stuff with the Crystal Empire and Sombra... I really didn't actually read it. Something about Cadance being the result of a failed supersoldier project.
So, Rarity's working on her dress and Opal's moaning about how hungry she is, and then, as we know from the episode, Applejack and Twilight, I mean Dusk Shine, knock on the door. Rarity, as usual, teases Dusk Shine mercilessly, using the usual "wet mane" shtick. Once the scene is over, she gives Opal some food, at which point Opal stops narrating. Well, sort of. She picks up narrating again at the next scene, wherein Rarity is taking Dusk Shine's measurements. Of course, as Opal so helpfully points out, this is just her excuse for ogling him up-close.
You know, it's one thing when I'm asked to believe that Twilight Sparkle is oblivious in social circumstances, but I'd think that she'd realize it when someone who has hit on her before is hitting on her again, as Rarity swoops in to make out with him. Not that he doesn't enjoy the sexual harassment, Opal so helpfully points out.
Rarity then details to him that if he says he loves her, he'll be privvy to all manner of kinky sex, but he, in Opal's words, "chickens out" and runs off.
Oh, and I should mention that Opal narrates that she does admit that Dusk Shine is "adorable" when flustered.
So then we shift back to not-being-narrated by Opal. And the author links to this
for some reason, I really don't get why, and Trixie whacks Dusk with a ruler for not coming clean about Rarity (or the "narwhal" as she calls her). Trixie then goes out to get her own measurements for a Gala dress (I forget, did she get a ticket?), and Dusk grabs Spike to review... The Chart.
Yeah, apparently Dusk keeps a massive chart full of data and shit about the seven mares who are after his well-endowed horn. The idea is that he keeps exhaustive notes on all of them so that he can figure out what to do and because he's all about studying like his female counterpart, but you know, this raises a question, I find.
Yes, we have seven mares all vying for his affections, but we haven't gotten much of a look at what Dusk's feelings on the matter are. To the best of my recollection, he's only expressed an attraction to Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy. What about the other four? Does he like them? Does he have feelings for them? Does he find them hawt? I mean, he doesn't seem remotely into the others - Rainbow Dash, Luna, and Trixie haven't really elicited anything out of him, and Pinkie Pie in particular seems to turn him off.
Though on a lighter note, I'm not sure who's winning; Luna or Rainbow Dash? Rainbow Dash managed to score with him while they were both under the influence of Poison Joke (I can't believe I fucking typed that), and Luna has had numerous instances of dream sex with him. But does dream sex actually count, or is it like cybering, i.e. the polar opposite of counting?
So, Dusk Shine decides that he has to take initiative for once (the protagonist actually doing something, what a crazy idea) and will ask one of them out on a date, and he settles on Fluttershy.
Actually, that's another thing - Fluttershy doesn't seem all that into him. In fact, she seemed kind of freaked out by him when he was hitting on her in the first chapter, and the only time she's indicated she's really into him is when she was going into that... lumberjack fantasy. And then when Dusk goes to ask her out she's kind of resistant to the idea because she knows her friends are after him and...
Dusk is actually making things harder for himself, really. By leading on one of the prospective partners, he's just inviting more entanglements into his ridiculous circumstance. But I don't know, this is based off of those harem animes I don't watch, maybe this is some kind of convention in that genre: the guy being clueless and generally stupid. Guess I can't blame the guy for enjoying the attention.
But Fluttershy agrees, and...
You know, there's a spoof fic called "How Every Shipfic Would Actually Happen," which lambasts many of the popular ships - Discord/Celestia has Twilight sending Celestia a letter telling her to stop making out with the statue, Twilestia has Celestia going "Twilight, I'm a thousand year-old goddess and you're a teenager, no," Rarity/Spike has Twilight chewing Rarity out for being a pedo, and Vinyltavia has Octavia deciding that Vinyl has extremely bad taste and just walks away from the date. Fluttermac is one of the ships spoofed in it, and largely consists of Fluttershy and Big Macintosh just sitting in awkward silence.
This "Intermission Chapter" is pretty much that, with the dialogue being repeated "..."
You know how in Family Guy, sometimes there will be a joke that isn't funny, but they'll drag it out to be ridiculously long so that the joke becomes the fact that it's going on for way too long? And it still isn't funny?
That dialogue being ellipses... I put it into the "find" function in my browser and it came up more than a fucking hundred times. Author, stop doing this! It isn't funny! It just makes the fic into a chore to read, because I have to scroll down to get a payoff that doesn't fucking exist!
So anyway, that's all the chapters there are for now. We'll see how it goes when it continues.
And for my next update, something new - a fic that makes The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine look actually good and inspired by comparison!
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